All through the year, we have been exploring Japan's culture. Starting in January, we began to read Kamishibai, which is Japanese paper theatre. We immersed ourselves in these traditional Japanese tales and soon, we had read all of the Kamishibai in the library! We even read our favorites AGAIN. Some students even brought Kamishibai from home or from local libraries. When some of us started making Kamshibai stories during choice time, we thought it would be a good idea for all the kids to experience creating a Kamishibai story. Creation is the most complex level of learning, and through this project, we would be able to show a complete understanding of the storytelling and performing required in Kamishibai. The teachers organized us into small groups, and from there, we chose characters and planned a story with a problem and a solution. Most of us chose characters which had appeared in the Kamishibai we had read before, such as princesses, onis, talking animals and old people. We also had the characters go on an adventure, and we tried to incorporate magic, which we had noticed in a lot of the Kamishibai stories. After dictating the story to our teachers, we did a quick sketch of what our slides would look like. After we sketched, we carefully drew the scenes on large, thick watercolor paper and carefully painted using water color paint and water color pencils. We noticed that the background in the Kamishibai we read was brightly painted, so we made sure to fill in most white spaces with bright colors. We also noticed that the figures in Kamishibai slides were outlined in black, so we traced our drawings in black marker so people could see from far away. After the slides were painted, we had to put the dialogue and small slide copies on the back of each slide. It was tricky because the small pictures and dialogue had to go on the preceding slides. Then, we rehearsed and rehearsed! We performed for the Pre-K students and the Nursery students so we could practice performing in front of an audience. It was really fun to read our lines (from the pictures and words) and to make different noises and sounds, which we had noticed in the traditional Kamishibai tales we read. Our teachers also videotaped one of our performances, and after watching it, we reflected on what we did well and thought about what we wanted to improve for the parent performance. The ability to reflect and evaluate oneself indicates a high level of understanding and learning. Finally, we were ready for the big day! All of our hard work paid off! We were so happy to have our families come to appreciate all the effort we put into making and performing Kamishibai. Working on this project was a great way for us to practice many important Language Arts skills. We proved that we could notice trends in the characters, settings, and themes in Kamishibai, compare and contrast Kamishibai and books, and use our knowledge of Kamishibai stories to create own own original stories! We hope you enjoyed our performance!
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We've finally reached the 100th day of school! Each day, we have kept track of the number of school days. Some of us thought we were going to first grade after 100 days, but the teacher assured us that we had some more days in kindergarten before that! During choice time, we had some fun play options to celebrate the 100th day. We made "100 Dots" artwork in the art center and played "Roll to 100" in the math center. Later, we counted out 100 small pieces of snack! Each table had ten types of snack, and we organized the snacks in groups of ten as we counted. We know that ten groups of ten is 100! Later, we make necklaces with 100 beads! We marked the beads by groups of ten with special white tags. This was great for our fine motor skills, one to one counting skills and extra practice in number order and counting by tens! Finally, we've been working on a massive 100 chart for our wall! Everyone is getting excellent practice in recognizing, writing and placing numbers to 100. We're almost done--please check it out in our classroom soon!
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